This cyber-crime thing has gotten to a point where we now really need a digital Batman to fix everything. Security firm Symantec has recently released its Internet Security Threat Report, revealing that cyber-criminals are almost as good as state-sponsored attackers.
They’re highly skilled, well-organized and structured like a business. Here’s what Kevin Haley, director at Symantec Security Response says:
"Advanced criminal attack groups now echo the skill sets of nation-state attackers. They have extensive resources and a highly-skilled technical staff that operate with such efficiency that they maintain normal business hours and even take the weekends and holidays off. We are even seeing low-level criminal attackers create call center operations to increase the impact of their scams". Yeah, I only have Sony Entertainment left to hack this week, then I can go to Bora Bora for a couple of days.
Zero-day vulnerabilities are on the price nowadays. Advanced groups will either take advantage of them, or sell them on the open market. Symantec says that the number of zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in 2015 more than doubled, to 54, breaking records along the way. Compared to a year before, this represents a 124 per cent jump.
The report also sheds some light on data theft, saying that more than half a billion personal information records were either stolen, or lost, last year. Encryption is now used by cyber-crooks to keep data hostage, a practice also known as ransomware. Scam is also making a comeback, with fake tech support centers (a 200 percent increase last year) being the most popular one.
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